Rate Maintenance Overview

The Rate Maintenance pages are available via Sourcing > Rate Maintenance.

Rate maintenance is the iterative process of collecting negotiated rates, formatting them for OTM, loading them into OTM, editing them, and repeating this process. This might be done on a regular schedule, such as once per year, quarterly, or otherwise. Or, it may be done on an ad-hoc basis as needed.

The Rate Maintenance pages allow you to do mass data loading of new rate offering and rate record data (thousands of rates). You create a rate load definition template, from an existing rate offering and rate records, which you can then populate with your rate data. The populated spreadsheet is then be loaded into OTM, where it is verified, reviewed, approved, and then finalized for use in OTM for planning and payment purposes.

Terminology

This is a list of some of the terminology introduced into Oracle Transportation Management for rate maintenance:

Term	Definition
Rate Load Definition	The first step of the rate maintenance process. This defines the content and format of the spreadsheet to be used for rate loading.
Template Rate Offering	A representative rate offering specified in the rate load definition. The template rate offering and its related rate records provide the structure for the rate load definition. This can be an existing rate offering or one that has been created for this purpose. You should never update a rate used as a template rate.
Parent Rate Offering ID	When specified on the template rate offering, allows you to link from a new rate to an older existing version of that rate (the parent). The parent rate cannot be the same ID as the template rate.
Parent Rate Record ID	When specified on the template rate record, allows you to link from a new rate to an older existing version of that rate (the parent). The parent rate cannot be the same ID as the template rate.
Rate Offering Structure	The set of attributes that makes a rate offering unique.
Rate Record Structure	The set of attributes that makes a rate record unique.
Cost Parameter	The cost parameter ID is used to link the details of each rate or accessorial cost (on the Cost Parameters worksheet) to costs in the other worksheets to which it applies.
Rate Load Group	An identifier given at rate upload time to group the rates being loaded against a rate load definition. The rate load group is a free form text field that can be used to group rates by mode, carrier, geography, year, etc.
Approval Summary	A specific rate load group/rate load definition combination against which rates are uploaded.
Operational	A rate offering or rate record which can be used for OTM shipment planning purposes. When rates are active, they are considered to be operational.

 

What is a Rate?

An OTM rate is broken into two main components:

• Rate offerings contain the contract level data specific to a service provider. Rate offerings are defined for a service provider, mode, service level and equipment group.
• A lane connects two different geographies or regions. Rate records store detailed rate information at the individual lane level. A rate offering can contain several rate records defined for various lanes.

In Rate Maintenance, there are two types of rates:

• template rates are the Template Rate Offering and any rate records associated to it. This is a representative rate and should not be used in OTM for rating. It is meant to represent a sample rate. The template rates are used to define the rate load definition which is then used to create the spreadsheet that you send to your customers. You should never edit the template rates.
• rates as data refers to the data contained in the downloaded spreadsheet and the uploaded rates that are not yet operational. Uploaded rates are only operational once they have been approved and finalized via the rate maintenance process.

Prerequisites

To start the rate maintenance process, you need a rate offering and associated rate records to use as template rates.

• Select the Template option on the rate offering for easier identification. This is not required.
• To compare rate versions, you must specify either a parent rate offering ID or parent rate record ID on any template rate offerings or rate records.

Note: If you edit the rate offering and/or rate record templates, you must create a new rate load definition.

Note: On both the rate offerings and rate records, add more reference numbers, remarks, and involved parties than you expect to see in any possible rate. This ensures that any rates you download will contain enough reference numbers, remarks, and involved parties.

Rate Maintenance Process

The rate maintenance process uses a spreadsheet as the means of downloading and uploading rates. The spreadsheet is Microsoft Excel 2007 file with the extension .xlsx. You must use Microsoft Excel 2007 or later to edit the .xlsx file. If using a newer version of Microsoft Office, you must save the file as Excel Workbook (*xlsx) format. The file format .xls is not supported by Oracle Transportation Management for rate maintenance.

The rate maintenance process in 6.4 uses a spreadsheet as the main means of downloading and uploading rates. To use Rate Maintenance, you must use Microsoft Office 2007 or later and save the file to the .xlsx format.

1. An OTM rate can contain a number of attributes which can vary by mode, carrier, contract, accessorials, etc. Because of this, it is not possible to create a standard spreadsheet for all rates. Therefore, the first step of the process is to determine the format of the customized spreadsheet. OTM does this via a new object called a rate load definition (create and edit rate load definitions). It is used to define the way the rates should be loaded into OTM.
2. Once a rate load definition has been created, you can either download a blank spreadsheet or download a spreadsheet containing existing rates in this format.
3. You then either populate and/or modify the Excel spreadsheet with rate information and upload the edited spreadsheet into OTM
4. Review the rates for accuracy (upload history, version history and view differences), approve the rates and then finalize the rates so they can be used in production.

The following graphic shows the rate maintenance flow described above.

To view the detailed rate maintenance process flow, see Rate Maintenance Process Flow.